Woman. Warrior. Writer. 9-3
Hyeseung Song Vol. 5 No. 10 9-3-24
Woman. Warrior. Writer. Hyeseung Song
How did you come to author your life?
There were other authors for a while; my talented and prodigious parents as well as model minority stereotypes shaped my life. As a child, I bought into the idea of earning my visibility, not realizing that it would lead to becoming invisible to myself. Mental illness put a stop to my pursuit of externalized tokens of self-worth. When I stepped out of the psychiatric hospital at 25, I stepped into myself. I left my two degree programs at Harvard, moved to New York and became an artist. In art, I found the unconditional place I’d always been searching for, where I could hold all the contradictory facets of myself at once and paint myself into existence in a way that felt complicated and honest.
Hyeseung Song is the author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl (Simon & Schuster). Hyeseung is a first-generation Korean American writer and painter. She lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York. You can find more at www.hyeseungsong.com and on IG and Twitter @hyeseungs and TikTok @noturdocile
Classes
BREAK: Write Your Divorce Story Workshop SEPT. 17 TUES. 9-11AM (HST) OR SEPT. 21 SAT. 9-11AM (HST) is a two-hour confidential workshop designed for women with limited time at any stage of the divorce process. You can be thinking of divorcing or you divorced a decade ago, but never wrote your story down. You will learn the basic Divorce Story Structure that will help you write a divorce story for your personal/legal file.
The narrative of divorce is one that is understood through the status quo lens of patriarchy. This means the story that stands and that we abide by legally is one that fails to acknowledge that we are 130 years from gender equity. (World Economic Forum)
Let me put it this way: Women are living their best 1895 lives! (And you wonder why you feel a little anxious at times…uh yeah, who wouldn’t! You’d have to have a lobotomy to think everything is swell 24-7. This doesn’t mean you’re joyless or dysfunctional, it’s just that every now and then you’re having a hard time living in 1895.)
Writing your divorce story helps on multiple levels. Writing is a form of trauma therapy, so releasing the words on the page affects your feelings about this event. Women, tasked with hearth and home, often feel intense guilt and shame about the break-up of a marriage, no matter the circumstances surrounding it.
Secondly, writing the story gives you the critical distance to see you live or lived in a marriage that might have contained or repressed your existence with objectivity.
Finally, it’s a handy tool because during the divorce you may find yourself repeating your story ad nauseum. If you write down your story, you’ll have a copy you can simply hand out if it is required that you explain your current situation.
Workshop has built in Q & A time. Raise questions. What is 50-50 in a world where a woman makes .80 to man’s $1.00? How might cost of living affect you? What about alimony guilt? In-laws. Childcare? You are not alone. Register at drstephaniehan.com
Disclaimer: consult lawyer prior to putting it in your legal file. See Youtube for more information.
Women’s Creative Writing Workshop Oct 3-24 THURS 1-3PM (HST) Women’s Creative Writing Workshop is my signature mixed level generative writing class. I teach all the basics of how to write a cohesive narrative and you are in community with women writers of all levels. This workshop prioritizes voice and narrative and you will be taught craft skills crucial for writing fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Know your writing strengths, process, and potential. There is an optional 30 minute one-on-one session that is included with this class.
Spots open for editing and writing coaching. Contact writer@drstephaniehan.com for project/word rates.
Embodied
I was a guest on the NPR Embodied podcast to talk about Life After a Gray Divorce.
I talk about money, family, how hobbies fail to keep a family together, and how surfing and hula helped me move into a new phase in life.
Always thankful to Ka Pā Hula o Kauanoe o Wa'ahila Kumu Maelia Lobenstein Carter for her wisdom and knowledge.
I got a brief shoutout in Publishers Weekly for my upcoming short story, The Swimmers, “which features a father in the midst of a bitter divorce who contemplates an act of shocking violence” in the Akashic Books anthology Honolulu Noir edited by Chris McKinney.
News
Ahran Lee (AWCWW) is a great teacher who leads allyship with your inner critic classes that help you to explore your creative process. There are many ways we improve our craft. Sure you take writing classes, but movement, theater, painting, many art forms and ways of expression will help you bounce, refract, and consider concepts and aesthetics from different angles. Check it out!
Read Reema Rajbanshi’s (AWCWW) author spotlight with Timada’s Diary.
Congratulations to Caroline Kim (WWW) for her appearance in Best Short Stories 2024.
Tamiko Nimura’s WWW) digital residency with SeventhWavemag features an interview with her, and she also has an essay in Joysauce.
Listen to Deesha Philyaw (WWW) and Kiese Laymon’s podcast Reckon True Stories.
CALL: Words & Wisdom
A new monthly section dedicated to both former WWW as well as former or current students! Share up to 250 words of creative process advice, writing reflections, teaching ideas, health discoveries, or a short piece (new/previously published)! Send to writer@drstephaniehan.com Ongoing rolling submissions space, so send it in—if you have questions, please ask!
Health
If you have disrupted your routine it may be because it needs to be shifted. Don’t be down on yourself. Maybe you need a break. I did a milk experiment. Tried non-fat as I learned the calcium is absorbed differently than oat or soy. It was a very unexciting gallon of milk. I’m going back to oat/soy. A few shots of regular full fat (previously my favorite) made me see that after 6 months I have lost the taste for it. Very very odd.
For most this is hardly revolutionary health stuff. But what I hope you can take from it is that we can experiment and see how our body feels and keep adjusting what we need to do to improve our health.
CALL: Island Alert
Maui’s devasting crisis alerted the world to our many needs here in the Islands. We’re on the brink of a water contamination crisis on Oahu. If you are living in HI and want to share insight or info about housing, water, public education, and the environment, please send info to writer@drstephaniehan.com up to 100 words.
Please consider a donation to the Maui Strong Fund.
Analysis Paralysis
I know that many people believe that a win for one group will save us from Armageddon. But this is simply not so. It’s potentially a delay, but it’s all who you ask. In Gaza it has already arrived.
So before people throw stones at the neighbor who is not going to vote for XYZ for ABC reasons, I ask people to look more deeply at the narratives at play here. What we are facing on a large national scale is a much bigger problem than one election. We are in a deep crisis due to the public’s misunderstanding of the extreme disparities of how we live in the US, and the highly personalized conceptualization of what it means to participate in civic life.
Group A: here we have the believers in the possibilities of nation as an organizing principle under which people can live because of the historic documentation, because this is just how we have lived, and because what else is there? Keep asking “But why?” around Group A and you will reach the end logic “Because God/Higher Power/Universe/Spirit says so, and XYZ is good” as the reason for everything. Songs, flags, and words that are designed for maximum emotional appeal excite Group A. Group A says we’re all in this together, before looking and deciding everyone is in it but Group B people.
Group B: People who believe in nation, just not exactly as Group A believes in it. Sometimes Group B also uses the logic “Because God/blah blah says so” but they are not talking about the same God as Group A. They haul out a different set of people, they may talk about inclusion—like everyone gets to believe in the same stuff is the idea of inclusion, however. Group A and Group B can sound uncannily similar because in the end both groups like songs, flags, and words, and both groups refuse to question anything because it’s just this way and will remain this way and say “What is the point of changing because see, the fact I am here proves it works!”
Group C: People who want to burn everything down and start again and are sick of Group A and Group B. Group C people can be construed of as idealists and irrational. Group C people don’t care. They like this about Group A, this about Group B and then sometimes hate their own Group C members. Group A and B pride themselves on the fact that they are not as silly as those troublemaking Group C types, may secretly think Group C may have great ideas, but Group A and Group B don’t want to listen to Group C because Group C doesn’t have any good songs or symbols. Doesn’t Group C know that parties matter? Group C needs to understand that “talking about the negative won’t get you anywhere!” This is exactly why Group C wants Group A and Group B to go to hell.
Group D: People who do not care about Group A, B, C, at all but say Why Can’t We All Get Along. Group D believes in nation. Sort of. They just don’t know what that means. Many Group D types want to hang out without fighting and are known for their generous sensibilities. Some prefer Group D to Group C, because Group D may be wealthy, or at least have decent food around or they are nice looking, and while they make inane observations, everyone claps because Group D manages to get a pass. Group D wants everything to stay the same or wait, everything can change, but their own personal situation, the Group D situation, must stay the same. Group D excuses themselves from community labor but use community resources to excess. They actively support Group A and Group B and want Group C to lighten up.
Group E: These are satellite types who refuse to belong to a group, but don’t say anything upbeat about it, they are just ruthlessly foul about it, but infinitely powerful. People don’t know if they belong to A,B,C,D and are afraid to ask. Group E believe everything and nothing. You don’t know what they believe and neither do they. Group E infiltrates. There is one Group E member in every group. They are independently operating sleeper cell types. They know all the songs. People are blown away when they realize that this Group E type is participating in Group A or B, and what? They were laughing with a Group D? But truly you never know what Group E is thinking or doing. Group E has a hard time finding other Group E members, but that’s the whole point of Group E. There are many. Out of all the groups, they are likely the most dangerous and strangely enough, are viewed as embodying the nation’s ethos.
Bluntly, there aren’t many good Groups or Choices. The US has long ceased having a viable political party that is remotely left leaning if you measure it by healthcare standards, wealth and racial and gender disparity, and general equity and opportunity. Better than many places. But don’t fool yourselves.
Members of Congress, those who hold the highest office, those who sit on the bench do not send their kids to school where there is gun violence. People in power do not even know anyone who enlists and will not send their kids to war to get college funding! They don’t care about your healthcare--#1 reason for US bankruptcy. They don’t want to change tax laws. And so on. Does this mean you abstain from voting? Not necessarily, but understand these are Orwellian times.
The only solution on a micro level is to lean into very local as capitalism and patriarchy thrive on a national level and it’s doubtful it can be addressed in any profound systemic way in your lifetime—yeah that’s you reading this.
Elected officials are bound by a kind of code that dramatically differs than non-elected leaders. Limit expectations.
Do not “get mad” at the people who are refusing to vote for one candidate because—really, why should they? What does it mean to say that women who live in THIS PLACE are more valuable than women who live in THAT PLACE. Conquer and divide, conquer and divide. That’s all that is happening. Don’t let it happen.
Do not shut up ever. Never fail to have an opinion. Express your beliefs. Live and speak and write your truth to power.
Check out Zachary Foster’s Palestine Nexus newsletter — great info on Zionism.
Perfect fall weather clothing!
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Aloha,
Stephanie